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Tag: production on air vs retina

Help Maria out everybody. She’s been anxiously waiting the release of the Mac Book Retina Pro these last few weeks, and to add to the painfully slow decision we’re all following, everyone else in the office is jumping on the consumerism bandwagon and talking up the next latest tech buy.

Stay tuned this week as our creative team here at InMotion Hosting all make their choices in what they are planning to invest in, be it the top Pad, Notebook, Laptop, or various Macs from the Apple family.

Unfortunately this doesn’t help Maria out much, all this geek talk of various specifications is just growing the want list. So I decided to throw it out there to you folks and help her make her decision. It’s like pulling teeth, because despite having settled on getting a Mac for creative purposes, their family of laptops has an incredible array of choice, overlap, and pricing purposefully to part you from your money. As I’ll now go on to explain:

On the left, the fully specced out Mac Book Air | On the right the Mac Book Pro Retina Base model

Maria:

Well my Dell laptop has already blown up several times and is six years old – so I’ve been thinking about getting a MacBook…

Maria! I think it’s past time to invest in a replacement, don’t you think? (Not that we’re putting the consumer pressure on her.) Anyway that said, her background is in sound production – Yes there are all sorts here at InMotion.

Maria:

I’ll be just using it for sound production, D-J software etc. I don’t do any video editing or imagery work so much. So as long as it can render this stuff with multiple channels fast…

“but it’s only $400 more..”

Here was my suggestion:

It’s not helped by the fact that everyone has their little bit of input on what they are buying and why. Pretty amazing that Mac of all brands has managed to stop Marketing AND Development departments in it’s tracks to stare dumbfounded at the latest new toys.

Work literally ground to a halt as we all crowded around to stare at Andrew’s new Mac Book Retina Pro Base model. The same one Maria is considering, only he uses it for the Xcode SDK, and those coding texts look so crisp maybe I don’t need glasses after all?

Stop Working - Andrew's Retina!

Here’s what everyone else had to say:

Mike (Marketing Manager): [He was going to go for the Retina Model I believe]

I went to see it, and it made the internet look crap. Big disappointment for me because I don’t do enough video stuff to warrant me staring at a crap internet screen all day. I think I’ll wait out ’till the next round of Apple releases.

The debate has caused a stir at all levels of the company, Bob (Executive Level) has already committed to buying the Latest Fully specced Mac Book Air.

It’s faster than my old Mac Book Pro, and cheaper than upgrading. Since I only do a bit of video editing I wasn’t going to warrant going for the retina screen either. It’s fast enough for my Office editing, and occasional rendering.

I think that’s in-line with industry consensus. Unless you’re a Photographer, or full time Video Editor, going for the Retina Family will put you in a bracket of spending for those requirements at least double that of the PC family, which is where I’ll probably end up in my personal decision tree later on.

Waiting to see if Maria will snap out of the glassy eyed ooing.. help her out bods and share your decisions with us. Is the Mac Book Air good enough for sound production? Leave her a note: